Chapter 9 Faith
The twelve-block walk from the hotel should take fifteen minutes.
It takes me forty, stopping every few steps to catch my breath, to press my thighs together against the ache he left.
My keys slip from trembling fingers, clattering against the hallway floor.
The sound echoes too loud in the empty corridor, announcing my unraveling to anyone listening.
My dress clings to my body, damp with sweat despite the November cold seeping through the building’s old windows.
I finally manage the lock on the third try. The apartment greets me with its familiar shadows, but nothing feels the same. He's been here. In every corner, touching my things, learning me while I slept. The space that was mine alone now belongs to him too.
Rosetti. The name burns in my mind like a brand. My father's enemy. The family he calls Chicago's cancer. And the youngest one—Luca—the one even hardened cops whisper about with fear.
I lean against the closed door, legs suddenly weak, and a memory crashes over me. One I've buried so deep I'd almost convinced myself it never happened.
I was sixteen. Four years after Mom's murder, two years into my careful planning.
The memory is so vivid I slide down the door to sit on the floor, transported back to that night.
Simon Putney. One of Neumann's poker buddies, always at his charity events. I'd been watching him because he was part of Neumann's circle—just learning their patterns, I told myself.
But that night, walking past his brownstone after late volunteer hours at the library, I saw through his living room window. His wife on the floor, blood on her lip, begging. Him standing over her with his belt raised.
I didn't think. Didn't plan. Just acted.
His back door was unlocked—these wealthy men never think anyone would dare. I slipped inside while he was still in the living room, while his wife sobbed behind a locked bathroom door. Found him twenty minutes later in his study, drinking scotch like he hadn't just beaten his wife bloody.
The GHB was from my mother's old prescriptions—I'd researched it obsessively after reading about date rape drugs, thinking I needed to protect myself. Never imagined I'd use the knowledge like this. The dose had to be perfect: enough to paralyze, not enough to kill.
When his muscles locked, when he could see and hear but not move, I pulled a chair close. My hands were steady. My voice didn't shake.
"I took pictures," I lied, but he couldn't know that.
"Your wife's bruises. The blood on the carpet.
Time-stamped." I leaned closer, smelling his scotch and fear-sweat.
"I know you work at Neumann Pharmaceuticals.
I know you golf with him on Sundays. Imagine if he knew what you do to your wife.
Imagine if everyone at the country club knew. "
His eyes widened in terror. Good.
"But worse than that," I continued, my sixteen-year-old voice eerily calm, "I know where you live. I got in tonight. I can get in again. And next time…" I pulled out an empty syringe from my pocket, one I'd taken from the school nurse's trash. "Next time the dose will be different."
I stayed until the paralysis wore off three hours later. Watched him test each limb, saw him realize a teenage girl had made him completely helpless.
"Your wife is leaving you," I told him as he struggled to sit up. "You won't fight it. You'll give her everything she wants. Or I come back."
His wife filed for divorce two weeks later. He didn't contest it.
That night, I wrote in my journal: "I am not my mother. I am not a victim."
But underneath, in smaller letters, I wrote the truth: "It felt good."
The memory fades, leaving me gasping on my apartment floor. That girl—the one who paralyzed a grown man and threatened him while he couldn't move—she's always been here. Hidden under cardigans and library cards and Sunday school smiles.
And somehow Luca Rosetti saw her. Recognized her in the careful way I dodge questions, in the pharmaceutical galas I attend, in something invisible to everyone else but clear as blood to him.
"Nine bodies," his admission echoes in my mind as I struggle to my feet. Nine men dead because they looked at me wrong.
The sixteen-year-old girl who drugged Simon Putney whispers: Only nine?
Heat swamps me, my thighs clenching at the memory of his body pressing me against that door. The phantom pressure of his thigh between my legs makes me gasp, catching myself against the wall.
I need a shower. Need to wash off this feeling, this wrongness that makes me wet instead of horrified. But I know the truth now—it's not wrongness I'm trying to wash away.
It's recognition.
Because Luca Rosetti isn't corrupting me. He's just the first person to see what was already there.
My hands shake as I turn on the water, cranking it to scalding. But even under the spray, even scrubbing my skin pink, I can't wash away the memory of those icy eyes. Can't stop feeling where his breath touched my neck.
The shower does nothing. I'm still trembling when I step out, still feeling him everywhere. My apartment feels different now, charged with the knowledge that he's watching. That he's always been watching.
I try to dress, but clothes feel wrong against my sensitized skin. The cotton nightgown I reach for reminds me of what I wore for him, knowing he watched. Everything reminds me of him. My skin feels too tight, every nerve ending alive.
I collapse onto my bed wrapped only in my towel, water dripping from my hair onto the sheets. This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong. He's a killer, a Rosetti, everything my father warned me about. The kind of man who destroys people for sport.
But my fingers are already sliding down my stomach, chasing the memory of heat.
"No," I whisper to the empty room. "This isn't who I am."
Except my body doesn't care about shoulds and shouldn'ts. My fingers find the space between my thighs, and a broken sound escapes my throat. I'm so wet it shocks me, have been since he pressed his thigh between my legs and made me grind against him like an animal in heat.
The memory of being trapped against that door floods through me. His voice, rough as broken glass: "Little faith." The way he said it, like he owned every syllable. Like he owned me.
My fingers find that sensitive spot, and I hate myself for my touch. The sheets beneath me are rough against oversensitive skin. I imagine his hands instead of mine, those fingers that develop photographs with such precision doing terrible, wonderful things to me.
"Luca," I gasp, his name spilling from my lips as I slide two fingers inside myself.
The confession makes everything worse, makes it real. I'm touching myself to thoughts of a man who kills for me. Who watches me sleep. Who knows exactly how aching I am for him right now because he's probably watching through his cameras.
That thought, him watching this, seeing me fall apart with his name on my lips, pushes me over the edge. Everything shatters, pleasure so intense it feels like breaking apart. My back arches off the bed, a cry torn from my throat.
Then the tears come. Hot, angry tears that mix with the water still dripping from my hair. What kind of person comes thinking about a killer? What kind of woman gets aroused remembering being hunted through hallways?
Me, apparently. This is who I am now.
Midnight comes and goes. Sleep is impossible.
At 2 a.m., my laptop screen glows too bright in the darkness, but I can't stop searching. "Luca Rosetti Chicago" yields almost nothing. Some society photos where he's a blur in the background. Mentions in crime reports that never quite name him. Shadows and rumors, nothing solid.
"The Rosetti psycho," one forum calls him. "The middle brother who handles the family's wet work." That phrase again. Wet work. Such a clean term for something so bloody.
The Rosetti name appears in federal cases, always as "persons of interest," never convicted. They own judges, they own cops. They own Chicago.
I dig deeper, following digital breadcrumbs through message boards and news archives. "If Luca Rosetti knows your name, you're already dead," someone posted three years ago. The responses range from skepticism to terror.
One comment makes my blood freeze: "The Rosettis don't just kill you. They erase you. Your family forgets your name."
My stomach turns over. Tony. The barista who called in sick and never came back. Patterson who stopped coming to the library. How many others?
He admitted to nine. But as I read through more reports, more disappearances that match my timeline, I realize it's more. So many more. The construction worker who catcalled me two weeks ago. The drunk who grabbed my arm outside a bar. The delivery driver who lingered too long at my door.
He's been killing for me for weeks. Removing anyone who made me uncomfortable, who looked too long, who dared to want what he considers his.
Bodies in the river, in dumpsters, dissolved in whatever chemicals he uses in that basement they whisper about. All for me. A woman he'd never even spoken to until tonight.
I search for more.
The drawer where I keep his Polaroids pulls me like gravity. Eight perfect paper promises. 'Protected.' 'Sleep well.' ‘Breathe.’ Each one a step toward this moment. I unfold the one from tonight, trace his handwriting. Even his letters look dangerous.
The cross necklace sits heavy in my palm, gold warm from being against my throat all evening. I've worn it every day since Mom died, since I turned twelve and my world fell apart. A reminder to be good, to be faithful, to trust in God's plan.
But God's plan probably didn't include getting horny for a man who kills like breathing.
I set the cross on my nightstand, unable to bear its weight anymore. The good Catholic girl who wore it to the gala doesn't exist anymore. Maybe she never really did. Maybe she was just a mask I wore to survive, to seem normal, to fit into a world that would reject the real me.
The real me who researches killers at 2 a.m. Who comes with a murderer's name on her lips. Who can't stop thinking about cold eyes that promise violence and protection in equal measure.
I move to sit at my desk, facing the corner where I've always felt watched. If he has cameras, that's where they'd be. My pulse quickens.
"I know you're watching, Luca."
The words hang in the empty room. Saying his name aloud makes my thighs clench, makes me remember his voice commanding me to say it again.
"You've been watching all along. Through your cameras, through my windows, through every moment I thought I was alone." My voice grows stronger, angry. "I just… touched myself thinking of you. Came with your name on my lips while you watched."
The admission burns my throat, but I continue.
"Are you happy? Is this what you wanted? To ruin my carefully laid plans? To destroy years of patience in one night?" My hands grip the desk edge. "You scared away my target. Made him run. And now you've ruined me too. I can't even wear my cross anymore because I'm too stained for it."
Sister Catherine would say I'm consorting with the devil. She'd be right. But the devil knows my name, and God's been silent.
Silence answers me, but I know he's listening. He's always listening.
My phone buzzes immediately, screen lighting up with an unknown number. My heart pounds as I reach for it, already knowing who it is.
"Say my name again."
Four words that make my whole body flush with heat. I should ignore it, should block the number, should throw the phone away. Instead, my fingers type back:
"Luca."
His response is instant: "Again."
"No."
"You will. You'll scream it."
My breath catches. Even through text, he commands reactions from my body that I can't control. My fingers tremble as I type: "I hate you."
"Hate me harder."
God, why does that make me clench? Why does every word from him feel like foreplay? "You're destroying everything."
"I'm protecting what's mine."
The possession in those words makes me angry and aroused in equal measure. "I'm not yours."
"Your wet fingers say otherwise."
The phone slips from my hand, but it lands face up, and the three dots appear, then materialize into words I can't ignore.
"Little faith, type back or I'm coming over."
The threat and promise in those words make me snatch the phone back up and type furiously. "Don't you dare."
"Then be good and answer me. Did you like it? Knowing I was watching while you fucked yourself thinking of me?"
I throw the phone across the room with all my strength.
It hits the wall with a sharp crack, sliding to the floor.
The screen stays dark, either broken or simply stunned into silence.
But even damaged, even quiet, I know he's still there.
Still watching. Still owning pieces of me I didn't know existed.
Tomorrow I'll have to face this new reality. Tonight, I sit in the darkness, my slick fingers proof of my fall, knowing that everything has changed. The Faith who walked into that gala doesn't exist anymore. What's left is his creation: corrupted, claimed, completely destroyed for anyone else.
The apartment settles into silence, just my breathing and the distant sounds of Chicago at night. I should try to sleep. Should at least put on clothes. Should do something other than sit here naked under a towel, thinking about pale blue eyes and hands that kill.
From across the room, my phone suddenly buzzes against the floor. The sound makes my heart stop. I crawl across the floor to look at it, the screen cracked but still functional, displaying one message that somehow got through:
"3 a.m. Leave your window unlocked."
My heart stops. The phone screen shows 2:20 a.m.
That's in forty minutes.
I sit on my bed, staring at the window latch. My hand reaches for it three times, pulling back each time. Lock him out, the rational part of my brain screams. Call the police. Run.
But my fingers trace the words on his latest Polaroid. "I understand."
At 2:58 a.m., I make my choice. The latch stays locked. Let him know I'm not as easy to claim as he thinks.